A few questions of varying difficulty

[sirxena]

First off, I will be starting another thread with an in-depth problem I need help with, but I have a few simple and not so simple questions in general.

New user (1-2 months) having brute forced the learning curve to setting the system up to start, some common terms and processes mean nothing to me. Some im sure i could search but im doing too much digging for tougher questions and need to ask others anyway so here it is:

these three questions I thought would've been covered in the terminology sticky but weren't and I haven't found anything to define them:

What exactly is a jail?

What is resilvering and scrubbing?

Can't really find a good explanation for "recursively"..does that mean and all subfolders? presuming the precursively would be all parent folders thus recursive... If not, what does it mean?

I'm' guessing resilvering is restoring, like from a restore point/image etc type idea, but maybe it's not. The word itself sounds to me like a full datawipe actually. And scrubbing..also sounds like a data wipe, but maybe it's cleaning like defrag or ccleaner or..something, but I'm at a total loss about jail.


I have built and refurbished computers at home and professionally for nearly 2 decades but beyond the most basic tasks I've always had someone else deal with the software aspect. My strength is in hardware. in the 80's i programmed games for myself in DOS but couldn't tell you even the most basic commands now. Outside windows i'm a complete luddite, and there are still a lot of hidden aspects to windows 10 i'm finding as I dig around trying to bypass some of the idiocies they keep adding /eyeroll. Hate so much about MS software but I never use anything else due to compatibility, so I'm finding a LOT of head-scratchers in setting up and fine-tuning freenas to my liking, and my goal was extremely simple to start with...just not so simply accomplished I guess: replicate the function of the network drives we have (Mybooklives from 6-8yrs ago) but faster and expandable to store communal files- mostly media i.e. avi mp3 jpg epub, but also some software install files, so that all 6 people and 20+ devices can access it all easily. No permissions needed, no redundancy needed, no encryption needed: nothing, just pool all the harddrives I can and make it accessible to everyone in the LAN.

Easier said than done. Can't just pool drives, have to break the data up so if 1 dies you start from scratch (not a loss of data for me, just time,) can't just say: here use all these together and call it Suchandsuch, visible to all. Nope, the simplest permissions have to be complicated instead of just default. Did I miss the simple install-and-go software for that sort of thing somewhere or does it just not exist? Sorry, frustrations with things that really shouldnt be necessary for what my needs actually are, but are because there is no entry-level blue collar NAS OS to do what I need, they're all over-qualified, and I'm not. lol. I mean I know I can make virtual drives on windows that don't stripe the data making it all or nothing, but I don't want to run a windows machine to be a glorified network drive 24/7, but that's really all I need is that one simple element, a file system, and open access from anywhere in the house. /sigh back to the questions:

Why does it take 15-20 minutes to load the system fully from power-off? sometimes it's even longer. Is that normal or something wrong with my OS install? (currently sitting on 30minutes since power on waiting to access webgui to check a fix) Usually won't reboot from webgui either, have to select shutdown then wait aobut 10minutes and it'll turn off, then power back up manually. Update: 45minutes from power-on to gui access this time.

Why does only 1 of my 2 pools want me to upgrade (and it's the one I keep having trouble with)? I haven't done any upgrade to either that i'm aware of, why the difference? What is the upgrade anyway? is it necessary? the warning tries to sound foreboding but I really, oddly, prefer to just stick with what I've got unless I need something.

Is there no way to pool multiple drives (without redundancy) without striping? I mean I know there is, but is there within FreeNAS/ZFS? I know striping improves performance but it doesn't really suit my needs.

Can I set up a default option set for shares owners/permissions etc, or does it have to be done every single time? (Sounds odd to need repeated creation but a current issue's troubleshooting makes it necessary)

And the most complicated/poweruser needed question: is there any way to block or skip an a adax assignment? Like i want to remove my ada1 drive, but if i add another drive i do not want it assigned to be ada1. Is that possible, or do i have to put a dummy drive in to avoid the slot? Currently running a dummy (80gb unused) drive in the slot I want blocked, but that's just a stopgap to hold til I can find a real answer as I'd really like the SATA port back.

Same question- can I force adax designation, like assign this drive ada3 this one ada6 etc, or can they only ever be assigned in order by the os with no choice for the user? I'm in no way familiar with powershell, ssh, or any other command line functions outside windows basics. If i find something to do there, i copy and paste andhope it works, I have no understanding or troubleshooting skills in that arena, but I'm guessing that if what I'm asking is possible, it has to be done on that level, not through the gui.

Oh, 1 more: Is there any way to merge 2 pools? I have 2 separate pools, which being separate right now is a blessing due to my ada1 issues, but for storage space and ease of use it would be much better if it were 1 pool with communal free-space. I have one pool half full the other 3/4 full AFTER severe pruning (it was over 90% yesterday), so I'd really rather not yet again redo the files in order to merge. Both pools are simple stripes. I know I can add a drive to either under manual options, wiping it of course, but is there any way I can just merge the 2, like merging 2 partitions on a hard drive, to enable use of more free space? I keep my drives below 90% capacity always, and 90% would be the same whether merged or not (well possible a little more merged since I lose some for every pool and again for every share) but I don't want to break up large folders or use my current arbitrary "old" vs "new" delineation. Storing tv shows. Old/completed shows multiple a lot faster than new/ongoing ones because the old ones are in 50-100gb chunks and the new ones come 2-300mb a week, plus a lot more shows dead and gone than alive today. I can't take the extra space from my one pool, because it will destroy the entire pool, to give it to the other pool that is filling up faster, so I'd like to merge them if I can.

Thank you. In-depth question thread to come later.

 

[danb35]

Why does it take 15-20 minutes to load the system fully from power-off?

It shouldn't, but without knowing anything about your hardware I couldn't say why yours does. I haven't timed mine, but it's no more than a few minutes.

Is there no way to pool multiple drives (without redundancy) without striping?

No.

is there any way to block or skip an a adax assignment?

No, but you shouldn't be doing anything that depends on any particular adan designation in any event.

Is there any way to merge 2 pools?

No.

It really sounds like FreeNAS isn't the right tool for your needs, but that's up to you to decide.

 

[Bidule0hm]

What exactly is a jail?

It's a bit like a VM but without the overhead of a VM because it shares the kernel with the host OS.

What is resilvering and scrubbing?

Resilvering = rebuilding the RAID array (after a drive replacement for example) and scrubbing = scanning the data and checking it against the checksums to verify it is not corrupted.

Can't really find a good explanation for "recursively"..does that mean and all subfolders?

Yes. A 5 sec (literally) google search gave me this for example: https://softwareengineering.stackex...program-which-processes-files-and-directories

Can't just pool drives, have to break the data up so if 1 dies you start from scratch

What?

Nope, the simplest permissions have to be complicated instead of just default.

False. I've set no permissions at all other than checking the browsable and allow guest access checkboxes in the share parameters. All the data is visible and writable by all the users on all the devices on the network, no problem.

Why does it take 15-20 minutes to load the system fully from power-off? sometimes it's even longer. Is that normal or something wrong with my OS install? (currently sitting on 30minutes since power on waiting to access webgui to check a fix) Usually won't reboot from webgui either, have to select shutdown then wait aobut 10minutes and it'll turn off, then power back up manually. Update: 45minutes from power-on to gui access this time.

Are you using a USB stick for the OS drive? mine takes at most 10 min and half of that is the MB POST. Server aren't designed to be turn on and off 10 times a day, they are designed to be on and just left on 24/7 forever (well, almost forever...) so a 10 min boot time is normal and not a problem.

Is there no way to pool multiple drives (without redundancy) without striping? I mean I know there is, but is there within FreeNAS/ZFS? I know striping improves performance but it doesn't really suit my needs.

Yes you can. Please read how RAID, and more specifically ZFS, works.

is there any way to block or skip an a adax assignment? Like i want to remove my ada1 drive, but if i add another drive i do not want it assigned to be ada1. Is that possible, or do i have to put a dummy drive in to avoid the slot? Currently running a dummy (80gb unused) drive in the slot I want blocked, but that's just a stopgap to hold til I can find a real answer as I'd really like the SATA port back.

No, and why on earth do you want to do that? the devices designators have nothing to do with port number, they can even change from reboot to reboot.

can I force adax designation, like assign this drive ada3 this one ada6 etc, or can they only ever be assigned in order by the os with no choice for the user?

No. Can you change the serial number of the drive? no; same thing here.

Is there any way to merge 2 pools?

No, but a pool can be made of multiple vdevs.

I have 2 separate pools, which being separate right now is a blessing due to my ada1 issues

If you have issues because of only one drive then you don't have the redundancy you should have given what you describe.

Both pools are simple stripes.

Ah, I understand your problem now --> stripe = one drive dies, the whole pool dies. Do not use stripe if you want redundancy, and it seems that's what you want.



In a more general way: please read https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/terminology-and-abbreviations-primer.28174/ and https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzHapVfrocfwblFvMVdvQ2ZqTGM/view and http://doc.freenas.org/

FreeNAS is not windows, you'll not be spoon-feeded (well, actually with all the ressources and members here you kind of are...), if you can't search and read for 10 min (or even less actually) on a subject (like for example resilvering: typed zfs resilver on google, second result: https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/819-5461/gbbya/index.html ) then FreeNAS is not for you.

 

[sirxena]

appreciate the answer you gave. The issue with adax assignments is a bug in FreeNAS itself, not a personal need in my system, I'm just trying ot find a bypass to work around the bug without tying up a SATA port like I am.

Merging the pools isn't a need so much as a want, if I can accomplish the above, and avoid using ada1 thus avoid my pool going down repeatedly (long story for another thread) i could then just put another/bigger drive in the vacancy.

The want for pooling without striping, is mainly because of the issue with ada1, but also may be useful as I have a mashup of various used HDD's in my pool and you never know when one may die, not that new drives never die.

I agree that what I really needed was nowhere near as involved as FreeNAS, but, from what I can see, there is no such thing available, at least not open source. Obviously greatly simplified versions with more suitable defaults exist on devices like the mybooklives we have, but those are a little TOO primitive. I'm sure I will make use of more aspects to FreeNAS later on, it's just a lot more than was needed, with added complications that aren't supposed to be.

As far as my hardware...that shouldn't be causing a slow load time, and the load time varies a lot. I have seen 10 minutes or a little under, once or twice, but the usual is 15-20, stretching up to the aforementioned 45. I have watched the full load process on the monitor a few times during troubleshooting for the ada1 issue, but there's nothign obvious. Hardware wise, running a phenom iix6 1035T CPU, 10gb 1066 ram, whatever mobo came in a dell xps with that processor circa 2012, with FreeNAS running off a USB stick. Harddrives shoudlnt impact load time, but if any hardware is the issue it's their age. Drives are all 5-12 yrs old, 250gig to 1T, varying grades of WD for about half of them with at least 1 hitachi, a seagate, and unknown brand out of a surveillance system, and no idea what else. They all tested 100% before I even began building the machine though, and the only errors I get are undeniably software related. (always ada1, regardless of data or power cables or ports used, regardless of drive used, same drives fine in other ada#s, etc,) but that issue is a lot more in depth than this thread, it just happens to be the reason for several of my questions. Oh, and the router is a Trendnet TEW-828DRU.

 

[sirxena]

no as i said i do NOT need redundancy, i have all the files offline backed up. I only lose the time to put them back when i lose the pool. what i need is space at minimal, preferably 0, cost, that's accessible by all.

When I first built the system, and every time I rebuild a pool and a share they are absolutely NOT accessible until I go change the owner to nobody, and for added insurance guest/guest only, but guest/guest only and browsable was not getting the job done without nobody.

you (bidule) say that I can make a pool without striping that jsut merges all the drive capacities, while danb said no i can't. From what I have seen, it isn't possible in FreeNAS, possibly in ZFS because of how ZFS works, so why are you telling me to read how they work? Point me somewhere if you say it's possible.

As for the rest of it, my earlier response here should answer that without giving the very long history to find the actual problem. Now I just need a solution (blocking ada1 would be a solution for example)

and thanks for the 10min response on load time, if that's acceptable that's fine then, I just don't know why sometimes it takes so much longer. I wouldnt be restarting the system if i didn't have the ada1 issue to keep fixing or trying ot bypass. It's an intermittent "removed" error on ada1 which of course shuts down that pool, but it comes back when the system comes back, but never know how long til it goes back down. Last time was 3 days so I thought it was over, I was wrong so here I am. Right now, knock on wood, my hope is that untill I can find another way to block it, I have ada1 tied up with a useless drive where it can't interfere with any of my pools, and barring a 3hour power outtage, I won't have to reboot the system until I get some bigger drives to add.

 

[Bidule0hm]

The issue with adax assignments is a bug in FreeNAS itself, not a personal need in my system, I'm just trying ot find a bypass to work around the bug without tying up a SATA port like I am.

Which bug?

I agree that what I really needed was nowhere near as involved as FreeNAS, but, from what I can see, there is no such thing available, at least not open source. Obviously greatly simplified versions with more suitable defaults exist on devices like the mybooklives we have, but those are a little TOO primitive. I'm sure I will make use of more aspects to FreeNAS later on, it's just a lot more than was needed, with added complications that aren't supposed to be.

Ever heard of NAS4Free?

As far as my hardware...that shouldn't be causing a slow load time

Ah, that's a new thing. Ever tried to run Windows of a USB stick? then try and let me know how fast it's going and if it's related to the hardware or not... And SSDs are useless too if I follow what you say.

running a phenom iix6 1035T CPU, 10gb 1066 ram, whatever mobo came in a dell xps with that processor circa 2012, with FreeNAS running off a USB stick.

Phenom is FSB based AFAIK and that's not great for the perfs either.

no as i said i do NOT need redundancy, i have all the files offline backed up. I only lose the time to put them back when i lose the pool. what i need is space at minimal, preferably 0, cost, that's accessible by all.

Ok, misunderstood what you wanted.

you (bidule) say that I can make a pool without striping that jsut merges all the drive capacities, while danb said no i can't. From what I have seen, it isn't possible in FreeNAS, possibly in ZFS because of how ZFS works, so why are you telling me to read how they work? Point me somewhere if you say it's possible.

Actually we are both right. He answered no to a double negative question which means you can and I clearly said you can. Make a pool of one vdev of type 'stripe' with all the drives. BTW "merging all the drives capacites" IS striping.

As for the rest of it, my earlier response here should answer that without giving the very long history to find the actual problem. Now I just need a solution (blocking ada1 would be a solution for example)

Well, no problem details = no answer possible. That's not a solution, that's like paint on a cracked wall, in fact that's worse than that.


I really make an big effort to not stop answering this thread but you sound like you're here to complain and not to be helped. If that's the case then no problem but I'll stop wasting my time.

 

[sirxena]

i'm really just looking for some answers, and I got some, just not all. Your initial responses came off a bit condescending, so that could alter my response tone. Anyway...merging capacities doesn't have to mean striping the data. The data striping improves the performance. I was just wondering if i could eliminate the breaking up of the data. Your above answer should greatly help that, thank you.

I don't see how that processor, FSB or not, would slow down initial load/boot up time. The system doesn't require anywhere NEAR the power in that cpu, so that weakness in that regard as compared to an equivalent without it...really shouldn't apply. We're talking about loading an OS that fits in under 2gb and runs completely graphic free. What strain could that possibly put on the boot-up? I'm not following you here. As I said though, it's an intermittently long boot-up. Possible that it's related to recovering from the ada1 issue.

I gave details in the previous response about the bug i'm having, but I don't really want to interject a 3 page writeup of its entire history. Pool goes offline due to drive ada1 being "Removed" suddenly. Remains offline until restart system. This occurs despite changing data cables, power cables, data ports, the hard drives themselves including varying capacities etc, not just swapping out identical models (which all have tested good 100%) etc. It always occurs on ada1. This is why I want to avoid ada1. I went through a multi-week process eliminating all other possibilities, and then did a /facepalm about ada1. I'd noted it with every error, but not consciously taken note of it's repetition until a few days ago. I have since been trying to figure a way around it, or find a solution to it. I initially thought I had, having found a thread here of the same issue from someone from a year ago and another poster 6 months ago, but there was no solution in the end just open questions. When I asked if there had been a solution and what it was, I was told that Corral was dead and buried (Corral had nothing to do with that poster's issue, he was running FreeNAS 9, post-Corral) and to go to the right area and ask again, then directed here. I only asked here in this thread, about blocking ada1 because that would solve my issues without going through the whole thing all over again. I didn't think I had to explain at every turn why I was asking every question. Sorry.

As far as Nas4Free, I thought about it and compared it to FreeNAS as well as open mediavault and a couple others but there really wasn't much difference as far as being well beyond my actual needs, so I went with the one with the most users, support, and positive reviews. Nas4Free had some things that looked slightly interesting that were different, but in the end, a bigger community means a bigger knowledge base = FreeNAS. I actually tried out OMV, and FreeNAS initially, alternating the 2 and testing the webguis, ease of use, functionality etc. OMV wouldn't show in windows explorer no matter the owner, browsable, etc settings, and I found the storage set-up to be a bit more cumbersome and time-intensive. There were other aspects I liked, but it wouldn't do what I needed it to do and it took too long doing what it did do.

when i said hard drives not impacting load time, i was referring to my storage harddrives being of older age/lesser tech. and yes obviously there are differences between ide, sata 3.0, sata 6.0, usb 2.0 and 3.0, and ssd load times, but 45 minutes plus, and a variation of that size..15-45 minutes...is a bit extreme to blame on that. With 10 being normal i'm good with the 15min boot, just wondering if the slower (30-45min)boots have to do with the ada1 issue or what because they are not the "norm" for the system, just sporadic occurrences.

So, in the end I've gotten most of my questions answered, some not so much to my liking but yes or no questions can't always have a pleasing answer. The one thing I didn't get an answer for is unfortunately the most important one. I'm sure someone with deeper knowledge of the programming could figure a way from the command line to block ada1 if it is'nt already a known thing, but it sounds like it's not going to be likely to find that someone anytime soon if at all. I'll continue on with my dummy drive for now and play around with the pools to see how I like them best, and hopefully will find an answer to the ada1 thing some time. It appears to be an issue others have had, but very few others, so idk. Can't hurt to ask or look, right? That's why I'm here.

 

[danb35]

He answered no to a double negative question which means you can and I clearly said you can.

The question was whether it was possible to pool multiple disks together without either striping or redundancy. The answer is no, that isn't possible.

 

[sirxena]

Yes. A 5 sec (literally) google search gave me this for example: https://softwareengineering.stackex...program-which-processes-files-and-directories


Yes you can. Please read how RAID, and more specifically ZFS, works.


In a more general way: please read https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/terminology-and-abbreviations-primer.28174/ and https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzHapVfrocfwblFvMVdvQ2ZqTGM/view and http://doc.freenas.org/

FreeNAS is not windows, you'll not be spoon-feeded (well, actually with all the ressources and members here you kind of are...), if you can't search and read for 10 min (or even less actually) on a subject (like for example resilvering: typed zfs resilver on google, second result: https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/819-5461/gbbya/index.html ) then FreeNAS is not for you.

I didn't see the part at the end here 'til just now (my eyes told me it was a footerfor whatever reason) but I suppose that was a good thing as this was a LOT more condescending than the earlier parts quoted here, and the very beginning of the post was simple, to the point and helpful...

You don't know a thing about me to be talking to me like I'm being lazy and stupid for asking a question. First off, NOTHING takes only 5 seconds online in my house, we have satellite, and it's not even a newer service with 25Mbps, we supposedly get 5-12..but in reality it is at best 2. That only lasts a week before we're over the cap so, after that we're on slower than dialup with the latency of satellite added on top.

I did a lot of searches for a lot of other things related to FreeNAS in the setup and trouble shooting process which took hours to do rather than 15-20minutes on a real ISP, so when it came to things I'd seen in the gui but really had no reason to be looking up yet or didn't have a reason to think I did like resilver and scrub, I didn't search them out, but since I was going to ask other questions and they were very quick and easy to ask and to answer as you demonstrated, what did it really hurt? Recursive..I did search. I searched the word by itself and in relation to freenas, but not in conjunction with zfs. Oh the horror that you had to type a 3 letter response (yes) to answer the question. So horrible that you went on for much longer to patronize me for it instead of moving on. All that work could have been saved if only I'd thought to combine recursive with zfs nistead and waited the 5 minutes for the search page to load so I could click one of the links and wait 10 more to maybe find the answer, but more often have to click yet another link and another.

I went through that process for days trying to find possible solutions to my ada1 bug. I looked on multiple different NAS systems too, just in case. I read numerous threads whose descriptions/titles sounded very much relevant, only to find they had almost nothing to do with their title and thus nothing at all to do with my problem. I found many promising pages from oh 2009-2012 then nothing at all until one thread here from last spring and fall. So, I am so very sorry to have taken up your valuable time asking such a complicated yes/no question, I should've thought to add that to my list of searches, and I should've known that the terminology post that's stickied at the top of this forum was not the one I should be reading (and it certainly didn't tell me anything I didn't already know) but I should be psychic and know which one YOU wanted me to read instead.

I asked a few very simple questions, then some not so simple ones, or at least not so simple to provide an answer other than "no" for, and I got the answers I came for for most of them. I just had to tolerate your tone to get most of them. I certainly do appreciate getting the answers I got, just not the condescension that went with it.

Oh, BTW: It's spoonFED not feeded. I guess you could've taken 5 seconds and looked that up before typing it wrong here, I mean you chose to type in the English language, I shouldn't have to deal with your laziness should I ? See how that came off? Exactly like you did.

 

[Bidule0hm]

Anyway...merging capacities doesn't have to mean striping the data. The data striping improves the performance.

Can you tell me what's the difference between merging capacities and striping please, I can't see any.

I don't see how that processor, FSB or not, would slow down initial load/boot up time.

Not the boot time, but the other perfs, like file transfer over the network for example.

We're talking about loading an OS that fits in under 2gb and runs completely graphic free. What strain could that possibly put on the boot-up?

Already answered that: it's the USB stick, replace it with a SSD and you'll very probably see an increase in performance.

I gave details in the previous response about the bug i'm having, but I don't really want to interject a 3 page writeup of its entire history. Pool goes offline due to drive ada1 being "Removed" suddenly. Remains offline until restart system. This occurs despite changing data cables, power cables, data ports, the hard drives themselves including varying capacities etc, not just swapping out identical models (which all have tested good 100%) etc. It always occurs on ada1. This is why I want to avoid ada1. I went through a multi-week process eliminating all other possibilities, and then did a /facepalm about ada1. I'd noted it with every error, but not consciously taken note of it's repetition until a few days ago. I have since been trying to figure a way around it, or find a solution to it. I initially thought I had, having found a thread here of the same issue from someone from a year ago and another poster 6 months ago, but there was no solution in the end just open questions. When I asked if there had been a solution and what it was, I was told that Corral was dead and buried (Corral had nothing to do with that poster's issue, he was running FreeNAS 9, post-Corral) and to go to the right area and ask again, then directed here. I only asked here in this thread, about blocking ada1 because that would solve my issues without going through the whole thing all over again. I didn't think I had to explain at every turn why I was asking every question. Sorry.
...
The one thing I didn't get an answer for is unfortunately the most important one. I'm sure someone with deeper knowledge of the programming could figure a way from the command line to block ada1 if it is'nt already a known thing, but it sounds like it's not going to be likely to find that someone anytime soon if at all. I'll continue on with my dummy drive for now and play around with the pools to see how I like them best, and hopefully will find an answer to the ada1 thing some time. It appears to be an issue others have had, but very few others, so idk.

The problem is if we don't have enough info we can't answer the question. With the new infos you posted here I can tell you it's probably the SATA controller of the MB you're using (BTW what MB do you use?).

As far as Nas4Free, I thought about it and compared it to FreeNAS as well as open mediavault and a couple others but there really wasn't much difference as far as being well beyond my actual needs, so I went with the one with the most users, support, and positive reviews. Nas4Free had some things that looked slightly interesting that were different, but in the end, a bigger community means a bigger knowledge base = FreeNAS. I actually tried out OMV, and FreeNAS initially, alternating the 2 and testing the webguis, ease of use, functionality etc. OMV wouldn't show in windows explorer no matter the owner, browsable, etc settings, and I found the storage set-up to be a bit more cumbersome and time-intensive. There were other aspects I liked, but it wouldn't do what I needed it to do and it took too long doing what it did do.

Ok, good you did test others things too. What about Synology and the others ready made NASes?

when i said hard drives not impacting load time, i was referring to my storage harddrives being of older age/lesser tech. and yes obviously there are differences between ide, sata 3.0, sata 6.0, usb 2.0 and 3.0, and ssd load times, but 45 minutes plus, and a variation of that size..15-45 minutes...is a bit extreme to blame on that. With 10 being normal i'm good with the 15min boot, just wondering if the slower (30-45min)boots have to do with the ada1 issue or what because they are not the "norm" for the system, just sporadic occurrences.

Storage drives don't matter to the OS load time. USB sticks are awful, we see that all the time here and I saw that on my own server, changed for a SSD and didn't regret it one second.

but I suppose that was a good thing as this was a LOT more condescending than the earlier parts quoted here, and the very beginning of the post was simple, to the point and helpful...

You take it as condescending, re-read it while being objective.

You don't know a thing about me to be talking to me like I'm being lazy and stupid for asking a question. First off, NOTHING takes only 5 seconds online in my house, we have satellite, and it's not even a newer service with 25Mbps, we supposedly get 5-12..but in reality it is at best 2. That only lasts a week before we're over the cap so, after that we're on slower than dialup with the latency of satellite added on top.

Well, if not 5 sec then 30 sec, not really an excuse.

I did a lot of searches for a lot of other things related to FreeNAS in the setup and trouble shooting process which took hours to do rather than 15-20minutes on a real ISP, so when it came to things I'd seen in the gui but really had no reason to be looking up yet or didn't have a reason to think I did like resilver and scrub, I didn't search them out, but since I was going to ask other questions and they were very quick and easy to ask and to answer as you demonstrated, what did it really hurt? Recursive..I did search. I searched the word by itself and in relation to freenas, but not in conjunction with zfs. Oh the horror that you had to type a 3 letter response (yes) to answer the question. So horrible that you went on for much longer to patronize me for it instead of moving on. All that work could have been saved if only I'd thought to combine recursive with zfs nistead and waited the 5 minutes for the search page to load so I could click one of the links and wait 10 more to maybe find the answer, but more often have to click yet another link and another.

Actually I didn't even put zfs in my search terms, I used something like 'recursive directory'. And that wasn't a yes/no question but more like "what's the definition of recursive?".

I went through that process for days trying to find possible solutions to my ada1 bug. I looked on multiple different NAS systems too, just in case. I read numerous threads whose descriptions/titles sounded very much relevant, only to find they had almost nothing to do with their title and thus nothing at all to do with my problem. I found many promising pages from oh 2009-2012 then nothing at all until one thread here from last spring and fall.

Ok, but why when I asked for more details so I'll able to help you didn't posted them?

Oh, BTW: It's spoonFED not feeded. I guess you could've taken 5 seconds and looked that up before typing it wrong here, I mean you chose to type in the English language, I shouldn't have to deal with your laziness should I ? See how that came off? Exactly like you did.

You really want to attack me on that? Seriously?

I can also speak French and you'll not even understand. So please be more respectful about a foreigner doing only a few mistakes in a few dozens of lines of text.

Really sounds like you want me to stop answering your questions, well, I can do that, no problem.

 

[Bidule0hm]

The question was whether it was possible to pool multiple disks together without either striping or redundancy. The answer is no, that isn't possible.

Yep, the answer is no, I re-readed the question and I now see what I understood wrong.

 

[danb35]

Can you tell me what's the difference between merging capacities and striping please, I can't see any.

Data goes to disk 1 until it's full, then to disk 2, etc. I believe unRAID works like this (with a bolted-on dedicated parity disk), though I haven't looked into it in detail. Does nothing for performance or redundancy, but it means a disk can fail without destroying all your data (just the data on that disk).

 

[Bidule0hm]

Ah ok, it's striping but without spreading the data. Now that I think about it, it means that if you lose a drive you'll lose files and directories randomly, I'm not sure it's better than just losing the whole volume...

 

[danb35]

it's striping but without spreading the data

"Spreading the data" is striping--that's literally what it is. "Striping but without spreading the data" is like saying "a circle that isn't round."

it means that if you lose a drive you'll lose files and directories randomly, I'm not sure it's better than just losing the whole volume

Seems pretty obvious to me--losing all your data is worse than losing less than all your data. The only way it would be otherwise if you had up-to-date nearline backups such that you could restore everything from backup in less time than it took to determine what's missing.

 

[wblock]

Putting a bunch of unrelated questions together generally does not get the best answers because people skip over vaguely-titled threads.

The issue with adax assignments is a bug in FreeNAS itself

It is not a bug. SATA devices are dynamically numbered, not a static assignment. There are other methods for static identification, like the GPT labels in /dev/gpt.

 

[danb35]

SATA devices are dynamically numbered, not a static assignment.

But OP is saying, strange as it sounds, that ada1 is always problematic, no matter which physical disk it is, no matter what port on the motherboard is used, cables, power connections, etc. If this is the case, that would be suggestive of a bug somewhere.

 

[wblock]

I don't understand what is being said about the bug with ada1. This thread has so many intertwined and unrelated questions that it is hard to follow. But it kind of sounded like OP was using stripes, which would make for an understandable error if a disk is removed.

Just for clarity: ZFS does not care about where a disk is connected. On-disk labels are used to identify disks.

 

[Bidule0hm]

I don't understand what is being said about the bug with ada1.

AFAIK the story about ada1 (which is part of a vdev of type stripe) is that whatever the OP did (swapping cables, drives, ports) it's always ada1 who cause problems. What I think is that ada1 is actually designating the same sata port each time (as we see most of the time the ada designators are in the same order than the sata ports) and this port has a problem.

 

[Redcoat]

AFAIK the story about ada1 (which is part of a vdev of type stripe) is that whatever the OP did (swapping cables, drives, ports) it's always ada1 who cause problems. What I think is that ada1 is actually designating the same sata port each time (as we see most of the time the ada designators are in the same order than the sata ports) and this port has a problem.

I want back and read everything in OP's 2 posts - could not tell if another install of FreeNAS has been tried - even of the same version but different downlaod - to eliminate the possibility of a file glitch causing this ada1 issue.

 

[sirxena]

that's the one thing I haven't tried yet, though it should've been one of the earlier things, but had some frustrations installing to start with that i've been procrastinating that part.

but yes, it's always ada1 that causes the issue. it did not matter which mobo sata port was attached (to juggle drives in ada1 i would swap cable ends sometimes, swap physical drives others, replace drives etc)

BUT....all that changed this morning when my volume went offline again, but not because ada1 was removed (ada1 is now a single 80gb gdd in its own volume to stay out of the way, set by progressive booting/adding drives until i knew it was going to stay there) This morning it was now ada3 and I am now at a loss for where to look. My only thought is to go back again and look at firmware on the hdd's that have become "removed" randomly. perhaps it was coincidence that they were fine until in ada1. I haven't cycled ALL my drives through ada1 yet, but about half of them. However, of the 10 drives I started with, 5 or 6 were WD of varying sizes, models, and ages. If memory serves, only 1 of those WD drives is on the 5yr end of the age range while the rest are in the 8-12 year end, where I found some similar posts made (c. 2009) denoting firmware issues but on seagate drives at the time. The only mention I've found of possible hdd firmware issues in freenas for WD, was in the IntelliPower drives, and none of the offending drives are so.

I'm currently running only 6 drives, having unplugged several to test a possibility of PSU getting overwhelmed as well as see if any other drives turn up "removed" ..all the currently connected drives have never been "removed". This of course means only 1 of my 2 data volumes is up, but it also means I will eliminate some fluke of the volume that keeps going offline, if this other one goes on me.

The slow boot sequence I have found could be related to the "removed" issues I'm having as well. Watching the screen some processes will run through 10-20 times before moving on, while other times everything will complete first time. The actions that repeat are always hdd related, but watching it the sata port changes, the drive s/n changes, and the ada# changes. This is what led me to try reducing draw on the PSU to be sure that wasn't the issue.

System has only been back up about 5 hours now, and the last time it was up over 36hrs, so I don't expect it to go down before morning if it is going to. Only time will tell. If it doesn't go back down I'll have narrowed the culprit down to things currently disconnected at least lol. 4 hdds, 2 sata ports, and overusing the PSU (all rails still in use just not all connections)

At this point idk what to do, but reinstalling the os is looking better and better. Probably using the "dummy" drive, if a usb stick is such a horrible idea (I thought aobut replacing it a few times with an internal drive after reading some things about them wearing out in this use, but I also saw their use recommended specifically for running the os of NAS systems, including this one. ) I can't just plop in a ssd, as mentioned earlier the budget for this is as close to 0 as possible, a ssd is definitely out of the question. If i could afford a ssd to put in this, I wouldve bought 1 2 or 4tb drives in the first place instead of mashing together all the spare drives i had lying around, and probably avoided some of these headaches.

Now, while I wait to see if it's going to die again, I'm trying to get FTP set up for it, but of course it can't connect. (ECONNREFUSED) ....
my reason for setting up ftp is that I use it regularly for other things, and I'm trying to find a more efficient way to transfer large chunks of data to the system, and just dragging and dropping through windows explorer is definitely not the way to go. Haven't seen anywhere recommendations on that (simple and efficient loading of the server without encryption/security etc) so, recommendation for that, or for setting up ftp (lan only, windows10 to freenas. I've already gone through all the steps in the documentation and several "how to" and troubleshooting guides for it. And no, i don't need sftp to just go from my computer to that one with media files, unless sftp is easier to setup or troubleshoot the connection on, security means nothing for this application. It's like locking a sandwich in a safe to make sure no one thinks of eating it before lunch lol.

anyway, i'm at a standstill now. have gotten some questions answered and had others arise. until I know whether i'm going to go offline again though, all I can do is mess with FTP to prep for repopulating the files, and for adding new ones as i get it.

Thank you danb for understanding and trying to reword for others in the confusion, and thank you both for the answers to most questions.

p.s. Synology- looked into it before going freenas, but not too deeply. it sounded ideal, but something on the way to just acquiring the files made me say no. Will look back into it to refresh my memory as to why, and if in the end I can't get freenas to work right (completely) with what I have to work with, i'll reconsider. Works great what I have set up, when it stays set up, just need figure out why it goes down exactly so I can prevent it, and find a better way to export files to it en masse. I may prefer a different setup for my volumes, but it's not a gamechanger. FreeNAS can do what is needed, and all my hardware is good if a little dated, but they might not all get along too friendly, so I need to do some peacetalks.